Legal Description Defects: 7 Title Checks for Attorneys

Most title problems are about who has a claim. Description defects are about something more fundamental and more embarrassing: whether the document conveyed the land everybody thought it conveyed. A perfect chain of title to the wrong parcel is worth nothing, and these defects are quiet, because a deed with a bad description records exactly as smoothly as a deed with a good one.

They also compound. Descriptions are copied forward from one deed to the next, often by reference, so an error introduced in 1978 travels through every conveyance after it until somebody finally reads all of them side by side.

The defects that actually appear

Five patterns account for most of what we find.

The dropped parcel. A multi-parcel property conveyed by a description covering three of four tracts. The seller believed they sold everything; the record says otherwise.

The reference chain. A deed describing the land only as “the same premises conveyed in Book 412, Page 88.” Nothing is wrong with that on its face, and it means the operative description is two, five, or nine documents back, and nobody has looked at it in decades.

The failed metes and bounds. Calls that do not close, a bearing transposed, a distance mistyped, or monuments described as “an iron pin at the old fence line” that no longer exists.

The superseded description. A tract later platted into lots, where deeds keep using the old acreage description while the tax map and everyone’s expectations follow the plat.

The acreage recital. “Containing 40 acres, more or less” attached to a description that actually encloses 31. The recital is not the conveyance, and it is frequently what the price was based on.

The 7 checks we run

1. Compare the description to the prior deed, word for word

Not in substance — literally. A dropped call or a changed bearing is invisible to a reader checking whether two descriptions look similar, and obvious to one comparing them character by character.

2. Chase every reference back to an original

Where a deed incorporates a description by book and page, retrieve that document, and keep going until you reach a description that stands on its own. This is document retrieval work, and it is the reason our guide to property deed retrieval treats copies rather than abstracts as the deliverable.

3. Reconcile the deed against the tax parcel

The assessor’s description and the recorded description are maintained by different offices for different purposes and they diverge routinely. A mismatch is not automatically a defect, and it is always worth explaining before closing, the same verification step in our guide to verifying property ownership.

4. Count the parcels

State the number of tracts the transaction intends to convey, then count the tracts the description actually covers. On assemblages, farm splits, and estate distributions this single check earns its keep more often than any other.

5. Look for a plat that superseded the description

A recorded subdivision or replat can change the correct way to describe the land, and continuing to use the pre-plat description creates ambiguity even where it is arguably still valid.

6. Search for the curative documents

Corrective deeds, scrivener’s affidavits, confirmatory deeds, boundary line agreements, and quiet title judgments are all attempts to fix exactly this problem, and finding one tells you the defect was already known. Their mechanics sit alongside the fact patterns in our note on title defect scenarios and lien priority.

7. Decide whether a survey is required

This is the boundary of what any records work can do. The record tells you what the documents say; only a survey locates those words on the ground. Where calls conflict, where a structure may sit over a line, or where an easement’s position is disputed, the answer is a surveyor, as our note on easement and boundary disputes sets out.

Where these files go wrong

Three patterns recur.

• Copying the description from the listing or the tax bill. Neither is a conveyancing document. Deeds prepared this way are a steady source of new defects.
• Assuming a title policy solves it. Coverage is a question of the policy, its exceptions, and the survey status, and it is not a substitute for a description that reads correctly.
• Discovering it at the closing table. Curing a description usually requires a signature from somebody who has no remaining interest in cooperating, and sometimes from an heir who has to be found first. The cost is measured in weeks, which is the theme of our note on costly title research errors.

What the record will not settle

A search reports what was recorded and indexed in that county over the period searched, with copies. It does not locate a boundary, resolve a conflict between two descriptions, or determine what a court would hold a deed conveyed. It cannot see an unrecorded agreement between neighbors about where a line runs. And recording practice varies by county, which matters here because indexing by parcel is far from universal.

Read the documents, not the summaries

AFX Research performs in-person searches, certified abstracts, and full document copies from any U.S. county — delivered in 12–72 hours and backed by our search guarantee. On description questions the full copies are the entire point, because the defect is in the text and no abstract reproduces it faithfully enough to catch.

Order a title search on the parcel, or compare our search products if the file needs the full chain rather than a current-owner report.